Individual - Alone

Loneliness overtakes me. My heart pounds me awake, my breath just out of reach. The quiet cry of my soul deafens me - I am alone. I am a slave.

The room slows to a timeless waltz as my lungs drink hungrily. The horror of the moment passes and I lie awake, alone, with the sudden illumination of the damned. A lie and a mockery is all that I have, all that I am - my dreams have long sense faded beyond the reach of my prison and apathy has overtaken me.

I lie alone, surrounded by society, in the shadow of my family. No longer spinning, I see my room for the cageless prison it has become. The movements of the day begin, conversations are had, and still my loneliness is complete. I am what I am made to be, my choices the concession of my jail. I dress, I eat, I drive to work - lives pass me by - I return to bed alone beside my wife.

My loneliness is that no one knows me. My despair is that no one cares. My sorrow is that I have enslaved myself and surrendered my dreams only to find that I am alone. Each step, each breath, is only to carry me closer to my final rest.


Life is lived in community, but in a society driven by the ideal of the individual, it is tragically easy to find oneself alone. Surrounded by society, in the mass of humanity, no one seems to care beyond the superficial rub that affects ones own life. Precious are those rare relationships that touches the core of the individual and unites it in community. The highest of ideals, the purist of morality, can only be expressed, only be realized in community - the tragedy of individuality is that it leaves each of us alone. And those few that seek true community find themselves standing amidst the masses, arms outstretched, the only response the hurried bumping of individuals racing by, seeking themselves in the barren island that is their life.